Top 10 best free web design software for desktop and mobile 2016

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Web design software transformed web building: if you were a keen coder, software could speed up your coding with auto-completion and macros; if you preferred to design visually, your software would turn your designs into code and stick them online.

Although more and more web building platforms are online and based around fairly inflexible templates, web design software still has a key role to play - especially if you like to get things done when you're far from a data connection. So which web design apps are the best? Let's find out.

1. CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor

Make your own professional-standard website in minutes

CoffeeCup's paid-for products are excellent, and CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor is great too. It combines coding and WYSIWYG design in an app that runs quickly, is easy to learn and can produce some stellar sites.

It lacks some of the features of its paid-for siblings - features such as the useful Color Schemer and built-in FTP uploading are reserved for the paid products - but unlike some rivals it's in continual development to keep it current.

If you're looking for a do-everything app on Windows then look no further.

2. PSPad

A powerful text-based editor packed with extra tools for web developers

PSPad might not be pretty, but it's pretty good. Inside the defiantly old-school Windows interface is a powerful programmer's editor that includes an FTP client for on-server editing, templates for common languages such as HTML, PHP, VBScript and many others, multiple document editing and macros that you can use to create and trigger commonly used code.

It's not an app for people who prefer a WYSIWYG interface that's more like desktop publishing or word processing, but if you're a keen coder it's an excellent tool.

3. Google Web Designer

Create stunning HTML5 animations for your own site

Google Web Designer's name is a little misleading, because it's really an advert and animation designer: it's best suited to people who need to create animated, cross-platform elements that they'll then use in another program (or add to their otherwise hand-coded sites). But if you're one of those people there's lots to like including Google Drive integration, 3D objects, layers and events.

As Google's showcase of animations created using Web Designer demonstrates, the app is capable of creating some really impressive results.

4. KompoZer

An older website builder, but still a favorite

We have a soft spot for KompoZer, which is a spin-off from the same Mozilla that created Firefox - but where Firefox has been in constant development from day one, KompoZer hasn't been updated since 2010.

That's a problem, because the languages used on the Web haven't stood still: while it's still possible to create sites in KompoZer, we think there are much better and easier ways to do it - such as the BlueGriffon app, which is based on Firefox and offers a more modern approach. Unlike KompoZer, however, BlueGriffon requires a paid licence for its most useful features.

5. SynWrite

A text-based editor for more experienced web developers

It's overkill for beginners, but if you're a keen coder then SynWrite is well worth a look, and not just because it's small enough to carry around on a modest USB flash drive.

It's a fully featured code editor with macro recording, plugins, clipboard history, text clips, stacks of coding helpers, colour pickers and previews, search and replace across multiple files and code templates too. It's been designed for every kind of web work from layout to coding, and it's a good choice for expert users.

6. Mobirise Website Builder

Create responsive websites that look great on desktop and mobile devices

You've got to love an app whose sales blurb says "creating well-designed websites is a real fun" (sic), especially when it actually is. Mobirise can create good looking, responsive websites with the minimum of fuss.

It's all about blocks: you choose the type of block you want, drag it to where you want it and change the default content to suit your own requirements. It's easy to see how your design will work on desktop, smartphone and tablet, and you don't have to use the pre-defined styles if you don't want to.

7. TOWeb

Another responsive design tool, but keep its limitations in mind

The free version of TOWeb is there to promote the more powerful paid-for versions, so as you'd expect, its features are limited: you can only create one website, the size is limited to 10MB and TOWeb will put ads in the website. It's simple, based on customisable and generally good looking templates, supports multiple languages and enables you to publish automatically to a wide range of web hosts.

The results are responsive too, which means they should work just fine on mobiles and tablets. If you can live with the limits TOWeb's free app is a decent option for simpler sites.

8. Weebly Free

A simple drag-and-drop editor that's ideal for making your first site

We've steered clear of online-only services in our round-up as they tend to be template-based web builders rather than web designers, but Weebly is a little bit different as it enables you to design the content of your pages by dragging and dropping.

You get free hosting and unlimited pages, and while you can't remove Weebly's branding - that's £5 per month for the Starter package, which enables you to use your own domain name - it's a great starting point if you want to make something that looks good without taking forever to build.

9. openElement

A web-based site builder that's very capable, but intimidating for beginners

The dark, dense interface might be a little off-putting for absolute beginners and it isn't as easy to use as some rivals, but there's no doubt that openElement offers a lot of power for more confident designers.

It does much more than most other WYSIWYG apps, and in the right hands it's capable of great things, but we think the interface is a little confusing compared to similarly useful apps like CoffeeCup Free.

10. Webflow

A stylish online web builder if you don't mind the ads and limited page views

Like Weebly, Webflow is an online app that's part of a suite of paid-for services - and like Weebly, that means there are limits on what you can do with it. The free edition won't let you export HTML/CSS code for use outside Weblfow's own hosting, your site will include ads, there's no tech support other than a discussion forum and you're limited to 1,000 page views per month. If those limitations don't bother you, Webflow is a great web app for designing pages that pop.

Have we missed your preferred web design software? Share your recommendations in the comments below.

Source: Top 10 best free web design software for desktop and mobile 2016

CrowdReviews.com Urges Buyers of Web Design Services to Select Reviewed Agencies

CrowdReviews.com Urges Buyers of Web Design Services to Select Reviewed Agencies

SOURCE: CrowdReviews.com

July 04, 2016 03:00 ET

SANTA FE, NM--(Marketwired - July 04, 2016) - CrowdReviews.com, a platform for reviewing and ranking web design services, has released a statement urging businesses and professionals to consult well written and thoughtful reviews prior to selecting a web design service. With many new web design companies entering the industry on a daily basis it will become increasingly important to perform diligent research prior to hiring a web design agency. CrowdReviews.com offers a rankings platform based on user reviews and experiences.

Those searching for professional web designers are urged to utilize online reviews and testimonials as a means of not only determining whether a web design company has a history of positive results for their customers, but are able to produce websites which best suit their clients. There are thousands of web designers and professional studios offering custom websites to their clients. It is important to understand the capabilities of the design studio and whether their design philosophies match the type of image your company is looking to communicate to potential clients and web users.

CrowdReviews.com provides rankings of the best web design solutions based on a transparent algorithm which favors customer reviews above all other elements. Web design companies are invited to become a part of the rankings by creating or claiming their profile and inviting their customers to speak for them. Those satisfied or dissatisfied with their web design agency are urged to voice their opinions on the design services provided to them and the end result.

To view the rankings of the best web design agencies visit:

http://www.crowdreviews.com/ratings-of-best-web-design-companies-based-on-user-reviews

To review the algorithm and how it affects providers of web designers visit:

http://www.crowdreviews.com/how-do-we-rank

To register or claim a profile on CrowdReviews.com, please visit:

http://www.crowdreviews.com/#registration

About CrowdReviews.com

CrowdReviews.com is a crowdreviewing platform which ranks over 500 software categories and 200 service categories.

For a better experience using this site, please upgrade to a modern web browser.

Source: CrowdReviews.com Urges Buyers of Web Design Services to Select Reviewed Agencies

Key Takeaways From Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Episode 43: DevOps and CD for Non-Web Applications

Last week, we hosted another episode of our Continuous Discussion (#c9d9) podcast- this time discussing DevOps practices for non-web apps, such as IoT, embedded software and Hardware manufacturing.

Our expert panel included: Mark Dalton co-founder and CEO of AutoDeploy; Stephen Hendrick, ESG industry analyst; Juni Mukherjee, author of "Continuous Delivery Pipeline – Where Does It Choke?"; J. Paul Reed, build/release engineering, DevOps, and human factors consultant; and our very own Anders Wallgren and Sam Fell.

During the episode, we discussed the differences between web-ware and firm-ware, the modern challenges and consequences of IoT, and the importance of simulators and version control in firmware deployment. Continue reading for best practices and advice from our expert panelists.

Differences Between Web-Ware and Firmware

"The importance of quality in the web world is relatively low compared to firmware and hardware" - @SDH_ESG #c9d9

Make sure you are integrating the #software and #firmwaretogether so they are progressing at the same time -@samueldfell #c9d9

Reed on the differences of firmware and web-ware and why we should be taking IoT seriously: "There are the obvious technological differences [between firmware and web-ware], like the ways you do development, but one of the biggest things that comes up is the paradigm shift – the difference in mindset around these things. Part of the problem with firmware is organizations go into the mode of delivering software that way. The consequences in the IoT space are so much higher. We are talking about serious business – firmware in cars and potentially people. Is it cool that these devices are connected to the internet?"

Dalton talks about the importance of accounting for firmware in your CD practice: "While you have to be continuously innovating and continuously delivering with your software, you also need to be accounting for this firmware component as well. You need to make sure that as you have your pipeline as part of your continuous integration, there is continuous testing across the platform."

Some benefits of firmware, per Hendrick: "Firmware is updatable and I think the whole notion of being responsive to change is ultimately a very powerful characteristic of firmware and one that ultimately, along with the performance you get from it, is going to be an important part of solutions as we go forward."

Mukherjee stresses the importance of simulators and emulators in firmware: "Let's say you have components being distributed and tested, imagine some of them are software and some of them could be hardware. At this early phase, should we involve the real devices? In the pre-commit phase of the pipeline, maybe we can use emulators, simulators. We actually did this with 3D printers – because it gives us the freedom in design that you will never get if you're constantly going back and forth in the supply chain."

Challenges With DevOps for Hardware, IoT, and Embedded

"You can have a lot of #agile cycles before you put anything on the #hardware" @samueldfell #c9d9

"We don't talk about #versioncontrol and #realtimerollbackenough" ... from @mdalton323 on #c9d9

It's no joke that the IoT has serious consequences. Mukherjee explains just how crucial some consequences are: "How important is it to get [IoT] right? Let's say, in medical devices vs. the online world? I was in the online advertisement industry and I was doing some behavioral targeting to make sure the correct ad is being served. What happens when it doesn't get a click, nobody dies right? Nothing happens. You lose money. But if it's a medical device, you can't take a single chance."

Cultural challenges are some of the hardest to overcome in embedded and IoT, says Reed: "The hardware people are the new operations team. They are the people you don't talk to until the end. They are the people you might make fun of and they make fun of the software engineers. In DevOps we talk about this cultural aspect. One of the greatest challenges is, as we've found with ops teams, you have to start talking to the firmware people. How do we make DevOps work in embedded and IoT? Make sure you are communicating with the firmware and hardware teams."

Simulators can remedy the challenges presented by firmware, and even defy physics! Hendrick explains: "One of the key takeaways is the notion of simulation. It becomes critical when you deal with firmware and hardware, because committing something to build a prototype is very expensive. And if you can build a software simulation of firmware or hardware, depending on what it's supposed to accomplish, you can be way ahead of the game from the standpoint of being able to understand how the firmware of the devices will work in the real world. In fact you can do things with these simulations that you can't do in the real world – you can defy physics."

Another recurring theme from the discussion? Version control. Daltonexplains its importance in firmware: "Real time rollback is absolutely critical, it is something that we have adopted and we implore our customers to adopt because as soon as a bug is out in production and a user finds it, you have to be able to go back to the previous version. It doesn't matter what it takes, you need to have full version control across the spectrum."

Tips for DevOps for Non-Web Apps

If you've written down a process and get a human to follow it, you can also codify it- #automate! @samueldfell #c9d9

Make sure you are doing a good job at dependency management to ensure #security for #embedded - @jpaulreed#c9d9

Have one image so one image can have one version to eliminate variability - @JuniTweets | #c9d9

"As you move from web toward hardware the notion of design becomes more important" --@SDH_ESG #Agile #c9d9

"automate everything--build and deploy, have robust communication for #visibility" - #tips from @mdalton323 on#c9d9 #DevOps #software

Here's a list of key tips from Dalton: "A couple of key things [when implementing DevOps for non-web apps]: have a single source repository, automate everything, build and deploy, make the build self-testing, make sure that you're testing a clone of a production environment and make sure that you have a robust process communication so that everyone is seeing what is going on across the entire spectrum of delivery."

What's the one thing app developers should be focusing on, perHendrick? Design! "I think there's an emphasis on design that needs to be taken more seriously. We need to have fewer surprises with regard to the devices that get produced at the end of the day, which will help drive down the cost of change. Good design is absolutely paramount."

Google is not going to answer your problem here, says Reed: "DevOps is very emergent in the embedded and IoT space. Don't think you're going to Google 'Continuous Delivery' and take the top ten posts and do that in an embedded world because you are going to get burned and you will think CD sucks. You need to look at [everything] and have some conversations with people who have deep CD and CI knowledge and apply that knowledge to the context of the problem."

Once again, version control and having the ability to roll back to the last known good version is crucial. Mukherjee gives an example: "If the outcome is that your house is burning, so be it, we need to think of that upfront, not when the house is burning. Not when your car has stalled, that's way too late." 

Watch the full episode here.

Want More Continuous Discussions?

We hold our #c9d9's every other Tuesday at 10 a.m. PST, which features expert panelists talking about DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Agile and more. Next time on Continuous Discussions: Fostering a Culture of Continuous Improvement.

Topics:

devops,continuous delivery,web application,iot app development

Source: Key Takeaways From Continuous Discussions (#c9d9) Episode 43: DevOps and CD for Non-Web Applications

Software for Industrial Knitting Machines Turns Out Made-to-Order Designer Sweaters and Scarves

Imagine you, the customer, being able to design a cashmere sweater in your favorite colors and patterns at a price comparable to a mass-produced item, and it's at your door in a few days. That's the idea behind Unmade Studio's suite of software for industrial knitting machines.

Unmade's software treats garments as digital files to be modified, letting customers change colors and patterns. But each piece is manufactured only after the shopper places the order.

The London company recently partnered with several large fashion brands and retailers to let their customers create custom-made pieces. The software is expected to help the brands speed their time to market, offer a greater variety of garments, and enable them to sell items specific to their customers—all without the need to warehouse any clothes. T-shirts, dresses, and socks would be included, as well as sweaters, scarves, hats, and gloves.

"Not only do we want to improve the efficiency of the process, but we want to create high-quality products as well," says cofounder Ben Alun-Jones, who has a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Imperial College of London and another in industrial design from the city's Royal College of Art.

"We're enabling a new approach to design and production, where everything is made to order and the customer is involved in the process," he continues. "This should be the norm, but it became clear when we were first developing our software that everyone thought it was crazy."

Alun-Jones launched Unmade Studio in 2013 with Kirsty Emery and Hal Watts. The three met at the Royal College of Art, where they studied design. Alun-Jones discussed the firm's digital manufacturing process at the Web Summit in November, which IEEE representatives attended.

Photo: Unmade Unmade Studio developed software for industrial knitting machines that allows them to produce small runs of made-to-order sweaters and scarves. A TAILOR-MADE APPROACH

The software that runs today's digital industrial knitting machines is incredibly complex, Alun-Jones points out, including files for computer-aided design (CAD), graphic images, and multicolor processing. A sweater with different colors, such as one with, say, an image of a flower, can take hours to program. Clothing companies usually order at least 50 pieces of the same style to make economic sense—which limits their offerings.

 "When we saw one of these knitting machines for the first time, we realized we could use software to knit a custom garment from the raw material with almost no waste," Alun-Jones says. And if everything were made to order, there would no overstock. Typically, he explains, about 10 percent of clothing made today is never sold and winds up in a landfill.

"There's no reason why the machines couldn't produce clothing in a style to fit every individual customer," Alun-Jones says, "except the software to do that didn't exist."

Unmade has written the first stitch-by-stitch mathematical model, and has built software tools to work with existing CAD systems. The files contain the full instructions for knitting an item of clothing on a customized knitting machine. The software generates a code to knit the specific garment. Knitting can be done with any yarn, including acrylic, cotton, or viscose, wool, or blend. Only the stitching is limited because industrial knitting machines stick to the basics: knit, tuck, split, miss, drop, and stack.

"We combined seemingly impossible and contradictory ideas about producing made-to-order pieces of knitwear for about the same cost of an industrially manufactured piece," Alun-Jones says. "The machine files can be generated automatically without expert programmer time or human intervention."

CUSTOM CLOTHING

To demonstrate its made-to-order approach, the Unmade team built a website that lets a shopper select a color or combinations of colors, geometric patterns, and materials like Merino wool, Pima cotton, or cashmere. Then the consumer can customize, say, a sweater or scarf designed by a number of fashion designers from Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom. The clothing label carries the Unmade name and the designer's name. In May, Unmade launched a line of customizable cotton T-shirts and is working on offering additional garments.

"What we're doing is fundamentally different because we don't hold any garments in stock," Alun-Jones says. "We just stock the raw material for making the items ordered and sold directly to the customer."

Customers can rearrange a pattern on an item by dragging the cursor over its image. They can view their design on a human-like model, made possible by realistic visualization technology developed by Unmade. Shoppers can see what the garment will look like from the front and back as well as from each side, thanks to the company's patented graphics software. They get a "complete and accurate view of what will come out of the knitting machine," Alun-Jones says, adding that, "every pixel on a garment is directly translated, one to one, to the stitches."

Sweaters now sell for £200 (US $290); scarves go for £80 ($116). Alun-Jones acknowledges this is a bit pricey, but he expects prices will drop now that Unmade has partnered with factories in the United Kingdom and Italy to handle production. The factories will receive orders directly from the company's cloud platform, he says. Unmade also recently signed agreements with several large brands and retailers, whose names Alun-Jones can't disclose yet.

"We have higher costs than if we were making garments in China or Bangladesh, but we are using the same machines as those factories do, so there's no reason why, with scale, we can't reduce our prices," he says.

An Unmade Studio piece arrives in 5 to 10 days, depending on the item and material used. This fast turnaround is the result of a queuing system the company developed for mixing types of garments coming off a machine. The company can produce, for example, a blue-and-white scarf, a white-and-yellow sweater, and a yellow-and-black T-shirt all in the same run. Currently Unmade offers up to three colors per item, but the maximum for knitting machines is 64 colors.

Unmade's approach eliminates upfront design and sample costs to make sure the machine is set up properly; the software gets each garment right the first time. And there's no need for clothing prototypes.

 "We're probably going to stick with knitwear for a while," Alun-Jones says, "but the approaches we're developing are generic and can be applied to any fashion manufacturing process.

 "We believe putting customers back into the process of manufacturing means they will also feel greater attachment to the products they buy and, hopefully, will want to keep them longer and not throw them away."

Source: Software for Industrial Knitting Machines Turns Out Made-to-Order Designer Sweaters and Scarves

Affinity Designer for Windows beta opens to the public, download for free

Serif, the company behind Affinity Designer, has launched its open beta for the award-winning design software, allowing designers to use the software for free during the beta period.

Affinity Designer aims to be a replacement for Adobe's Photoshop, by providing more refined tools and greater performance over its competitor. The software was awarded Apple's Design Award in 2015 for its aesthetics.

Take a look at the program in action with a video that Serif posted on its website:

As can be expected, this beta doesn't include every feature off-the-bat, however, it offers most of the tools designers would need to get started, including:

Layers

Unlimited redo history

Saved styles

Special effects

Export into multiple formats, including: PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PSD, PDF, SVG WMF and EPS

It would take all day to list every feature – and that's one of the main selling points for Affinity Designer. It comes with everything a designer would need to bring the best out in their designs. When booting-up the program, it shows off some of the featured work that has been completed using its tools, giving an idea of how it can be used, both in the real-world and for testing.

To sign-up for the beta and download Affinity Design, head over here.

Affinity DesignerAffinity Designer BetaDesign SoftwareMicrosoftSerifWindows 10

Source: Affinity Designer for Windows beta opens to the public, download for free